Password Plus
September 1979-1982
Host: Allen Ludden, Bill Cullen, Tom Kennedy
Announcer: Gene Wood, John Harlan
Premise: It's more than Password...it's Password Plus! Two contestants paired with celebrities endeavor to solve password puzzles and win $5,000 in the Alphabetics bonus.
Rules: The celebrity with the new player is given the first password, and may either play or pass the first clue. A player who could not come up with a clue after being passed to gave the opposing player two clues in a row. Whoever got the password right got to guess the Password Puzzle.
Password Puzzle
The five passwords in the round each added up to the identity of the password puzzle, which could be a person, a place or a thing. The team that won the password (whether through a guessed password or as a penalty) gets to have the password guesser give one guess to the password puzzle. A correct guess wins the round's value. A wrong guess has no penalty. The team that got the last password got control of the next one (very briefly early in the run, the opponents got control.)
Illegal Clues
An illegal clue would be one that:
is the actual password
is too close in meaning to the actual password
From 23-April-1979 to the end of the show, antonyms of the password were no longer allowed as clues to the password.
After an illegal clue, the partner lost the right to guess the password. If the actual password was blurted out, the opponents got a free guess at the puzzle.
The first two puzzles were worth $100, and any puzzles after those two were worth $200. The first team to reach $300 won the game. After each puzzle, the contestant and celebrity trade "giving/receiving" roles.
Toward the end of the run (after Tom Kennedy beccame the permanent host of the show) the goal was $500. The first three puzzles were worth $100 each, and every puzzle after that was worth $200.
Alphabetics: The winning celebrity had 60 seconds to communicate 10 words whose initial letters were consecutive:
A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J
Each word guessed by the contestant won $100, and the $5000 was given for all 10. Each illegal clue given by the celebrity deducted $1000 from the jackpot. Winning contestants could stay on the show for seven games, for a possible $37,800 if they got every password puzzle and won all seven Alphabetics games.
Toward the end of the run, Alphabetics was played for a climbing jackpot. Each time the jackpot was not won, it increased by $5,000 until claimed by the champion. Illegal clues deducted 20% of the potential pot.